Blustering and melodramatic, the afternoon rains cause traffic jams at once terrible—choked with the black smoke of lorries and the screeching brakes of schoolbuses—and beautiful: aglow with winding lines of watery yellow headlights that go on forever, with blue streetlamps reflected in burgeoning puddles, with the fluorescent melancholy of empty roadside stalls.

Blustering bullies stripped of any vestige of humanity flaunted their chains and spouted their vitriol for all to hear, while defeated-looking men with dead eyes hung their heads and spoke in hushed tones to whoever had come to visit them.